The purpose of this article is to shed a philosophical light on the nature of the living, and to do so on the nature of the various vital operations, the symbolic and sensory embodiments of which will be studied. That phenomenology will be firstly done from a general point of view: what is life? what is a vital act, a vital operation? But that general definition being an abstraction made from the diversity of reality, we will also consider that diversity, i.e. acts such as development, sensible knowledge, intellectual knowledge, inclination and transmission. That approach is part of a general context in which many reflections are carried out about what a “living machine” could be. Furthermore, a context in which emerging hypotheses make connections between vital characteristics on the one hand, and confidence and attachment to objects on the other hand. That invites us to question the nature and diversity of vital operations, as well as their tangible characteristics.